Speculation, pure and simple

Posted on November 4, 2003 in Myths & Mysticism

Maybe it all started as a joke. Rain fell. The hunters ran to a cave. They grumbled at their bad fortune. Then some wag said “There’s this guy up in the sky dumping bags of water on us.”

The hunters laughed. They butted it around quite a bit. There was a god who did the water, another who did the thunder, another who chased the game around. Maybe they wore deerskins and put on antlers for fun. “Oh, I’m a deer! I’m a deer!”

The story went around the tribe. The trouble was, some people started believing that there really was someone up there dumping rain. Generations passed and they got angry when people laughed about the idea of a rain god. They reacted with the rage of a child who had just heard that there was no Santa Claus. Priests, the prototelevangelists, appeared, collecting money and labor for the building of temples. People came to depend on the temples for their living. When someone showed up with a new God who threatened their business they raged and held prayer rallies. “Hail Great Diana of Ephesus!” “Hail Zeus!” “Throw this bum out of town!”

Now and again, a human spirit showed up with the courage to say that maybe there are only natural processes and the gods are illusions. I think that we have jumped to the conclusion of divinity without much supporting evidence. I don’t believe that gods dump water on us and hurl thunderbolts. Great consciousnesses such as those — ones’ which cover and perhaps transcend the universe — have better things to do.

There’s a big fear I have. That I will tell a joke or declaim a poem and someone will make a dogma out of it. Then stone me for not following it to the letter.